“It seems she can take care of herself a good deal better than you can,” I remarked. “It is she who is independent; it is you whom slavery has left helpless.”
“Well, some of them have made money, and know how to keep it. But they are very few.”
“Yet do not those few indicate what the race may become? And, when we consider the bondage from which they have just broken, and the childish improvidence which was natural to them in that condition, is it not a matter of surprise that so many know how to take care of themselves?” She candidly confessed that it was.
As an illustration of a practice Southern ladies too commonly indulge in, I may state that, while we were conversing, she sat in the chimney-corner, chewing a dainty little quid, and spitting into the fire something that looked marvellously like tobacco juice.
As I was to take the train for Memphis at two o’clock in the morning, I engaged a hackman to come to the house for me at one. Relying upon his fidelity, I went to bed, slept soundly, and awoke providentially at a quarter past the hour agreed upon. I waited half an hour for him, and he did not appear. Opening the door to listen for coming wheels, I heard the train whistle. Catching up my luggage, which luckily was not heavy, I rushed out to search, at dead of night, in a strange town, lampless, soundless, and fast asleep, for a railroad depot, which I should scarce have thought of finding even by daylight without inquiring my way. Not a living creature was abroad; not a light was visible in any house; I could not see the ground I was treading upon. Fortunately I knew the general direction in which the railroad lay; I struck it at last; then I saw a light, which guided me to the depot.
But where was the train? It was already over-due. I could hear it whistling occasionally down the track, where some accident had happened to it. The depot consisted of a little framed box just large enough for a ticket-office. You stood outside and bought your ticket through a hole. This box contained a stove, a railroad lantern, and two men. The door, contrary to the custom of the country, was kept scrupulously shut. In vain were all appeals to the two men within to open it. They were talking and laughing by their comfortable fire, while the waiting passengers outside were freezing. Two hours we waited, that cold winter’s night, for the train which did not come. There was an express-office lighted up near by, but there was no admittance for strangers there either.
Seeing a red flame a short distance up the railroad track, and human forms passing at times before it, I went stumbling out through the darkness towards it. I found it an encampment of negroes. Twelve men, women, and children were grouped in gypsy fashion about a smoky fire. They were in a miserable condition, wretchedly clad, hungry, weary, and sleepy, but unable to sleep. One woman held in her arms a sick babe, that kept up its perpetual sad wail through the night. The wind seemed to be in every direction, blowing the smoke into everybody’s eyes. Yet these suffering and oppressed creatures did for me what men of my own color had refused to do,—they made room for me at their fire, and hospitably invited me to share such poor comforts as they had. The incident was humiliating and touching. One man gave me an apple, for which I was but too glad to return him many times its cost.
They told me their story. They had been working all summer for a planter in Tishemingo County, who had refused to pay them, and they were now hunting for new homes. Two or three had a little money; the rest had none. It made my heart sick to look at them, and feel that it was out of my power to do them any real, permanent service. But they were not discouraged. Said the spokesman of the party, cheerfully,—an old gray-haired man in tatters,—“I’ll drap my feet into de road in de mornin’; I’ll go till I find somefin’!”
Hearing the train again, whistling in earnest this time, I took leave of them, and reached the depot just as it arrived.